![]() In 'The Shunned House' it is the weakest element in a powerful story: the explanation of the haunting, with its 'certain kinetic patterns' continuing-to function in 'some multipledimensioned space along the original lines of force,' seems a muddle. He found it not in occultism, which he thought banal, but in a subtle, often vague, blend of science fiction and the supernatural. Yet in 'The Shunned House' the search continues the detective-story structure which Lin Carter has analyzed, and which has its roots in Machen's 'Great God Pan,' is yet more skilfully used, but Lovecraft is still seeking a background which will make his horrors both plausible and suggestive. By 1923, in 'The Rats in the Walls,' Lovecraft had refined his method: the story's movement has far less to do with plot than with a gradual accumulation of telling detail, presented with relentless logic the story moves single-mindedly toward terror. Rather it was a step in Lovecraft's search for the perfect form for the weird tale. So what was the Mythos in the first place? August Derleth has pointed out that it was not a planned development on Lovecraft's part indeed, Lovecraft never even gave it a name. ![]() Introduction What was the Cthulhu Mythos, to begin with? The question needs to be asked for clarity's sake, for the Mythos has been so elaborated and overpopulated, reworked in attempts to give it unity, explained and contradictorily reexplained, that it is now impossible to distinguish a total structure - by no means wholly a bad situation, as I hope to show. KLEIN The Black Tome of Alsophocus by H.P LOVECRAFT AND MARTIN S WARNES Than Curse the Darkness by DAVID DRAKE The Faces at Pine Dunes by RAMSEY CAMPBELL Notes on Contributors ATTANASIO The Second Wish by BRIAN LUMLEY Dark Awakening by FRANK BELKNAP LONG Shaft Number 247 by BASIL COPPER Black Man With a Horn by T. Table of Contents Introduction Crouch End by STEPHEN KING The Star Pools by A. To the memory of August Derleth whose idea this book was. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Also published by Grafton Books Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (edited by August Derleth) GRAFTON BOOKS A Division of the Collins Publishing Group LONDON CLASGOW TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND Grafton Books A Division of the Collins Publishing Group 8 Grafton Street, London WlX 3LA A Grafton UK Paperback Original 1988 Copyright c Arkham House Publishers, Inc 1980 ISBN 3-2 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow Set in Century Schoolbook All rights reserved. The stories in this anthology are thus intended as satisfying contemporary entertainments and as a collective testimony to the darkly enduring power of this strange Rhode Island recluse, the man with the cosmic mind. New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos is a celebration of Lovecraft's achievement, a tribute to this most influential of twentieth-century American fantasists, by such present-day masters of the genre as Stephen King, Basil Copper, Ramsey Campbell, and T. Mythic deities and alien landscapes emanated in eldritch array, like a litany of maledictions, from the pulp magazines of the era that published his fiction. As a self-professed outsider in his own century, Lovecraft invested his inner visions with such intensity that he was able to will an entire world into being: Great Cthulhu, the blind idiot god Azathoth, the sea-sunken realm of R'lyeh, the infamous Necronomicon. Lovecraft was a mythmaker, a visionary, a conjurer of dreams. New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Edited, with an Introduction by RAMSEY CAMPBELL The late H.
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